Kwentuhang Champorado ng Bayan Over a Cup of Coffee.

Does Obama know what he’s talking about?

Speaking in unscripted environments on important issues, Barack Obama betrays a troubling lack of knowledge. He does not appear to know what he’s talking about. In his interview with ABC’s Jake Tapper earlier this week, for example, Obama advocated an approach to combating terrorism that is supposedly more attuned to legal issues than the Bush administration’s:

It is my firm belief that we can track terrorists, we can crack down on threats against the United States. But we can do so within the constraints of our Constitution. Let’s take the

example of Guantanamo. What we know is that in previous terrorist attacks, for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated.

Andrew McCarthy (the lead prosecutor of the perpetrators of the 1993 WTC attack) comments:

This is a remarkably ignorant account of the American experience with jihadism. In point of fact, while the government managed to prosecute many people responsible for the 1993 WTC bombing, many also escaped prosecution because of the limits on civilian criminal prosecution. Some who contributed to the attack, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, continued to operate freely because they were beyond the system’s capacity to apprehend. Abdul Rahman Yasin was released prematurely because there was not sufficient evidence to hold him — he fled to Iraq, where he was harbored for a decade (and has never been apprehended).

McCarthy discusses the subsequent terrorist attacks on Americans and American assets during the Clinton administration culminating in the 9/11 attack at the outset of the Bush administration. He notes the futility of the law enforcement approach to combating terrorism. But Obama’s comments fall short on additional factual grounds as well.

The convicted spiritual mentor of the 1993 WTC bombers is Omar Abdel-Rahman (“the blind sheikh”). According to Obama, the blind sheikh was “incapacitated” and therefore rendered harmless by his conviction and imprisonment. In fact, however, with the assistance of attorney Lynne Stewart, Abdel-Rahman continued to wage jihad from behind bars, issuing instructions to his followers in Egypt. Stewart has been convicted for the assistance she lent to Abdel-Rahman, but she remains at liberty.

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania last Saturday, Obama addressed the Supreme Court’s Boumediene decision granting Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge their confinement through habeas corpus proceedings in federal court. Obama asserted that the “principle of habeas corpus, that a state can’t just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process — that’s the essence of who we are.” He explained:

I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday.

John Hinderaker and I derived some precepts for trial lawyers from the Nuremberg trial in “Lessons from the cross-examination of Hermann Goering.” In the course of researching that article I was reminded that the Nuremberg trial was conducted before a military commission composed of representatives of the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union. The most prominent surviving Nazi leaders were brought for trial before the Nuremberg tribunal in late 1945. Winston Churchill had proposed, not unreasonably, that they be summarily shot. The victorious allies nevertheless subsequently agreed that they would be brought before a military commission to be convened pursuant to the London Agreement of August 8, 1945.

In Boumediene, the Supreme Court disapproved of the system of military commissions Congress had adopted at the Supreme Court’s urging. Obama to the contrary notwithstanding, the Nuremberg defendants’ “day in court” occurred before the kind of tribunal the Supreme Court found constitutionally inadequate in Boumediene.

The Nazi war criminals were given no access to American courts. Their rights were governed by the charter annexed to the London Agreement. Here is the fair trial provision of the charter:

In order to ensure fair trial for the Defendants, the following procedure shall be followed:(a) The Indictment shall include full particulars specifying in detail the charges against the Defendants. A copy of the Indictment and of all the documents lodged with the Indictment, translated into a language which he understands, shall be furnished to the Defendant at reasonable time before the Trial.

(b) During any preliminary examination or trial of a Defendant he will have the right to give any explanation relevant to the charges made against him.

(c) A preliminary examination of a Defendant and his Trial shall be conducted in, or translated into, a language which the Defendant understands.

(d) A Defendant shall have the right to conduct his own defense before the Tribunal or to have the assistance of Counsel.

(e) A Defendant shall have the right through himself or through his Counsel to present evidence at the Trial in support of his defense, and to cross-examine any witness called by the Prosecution.

The charter provision on the appeal rights of the Nuremberg defendants was even shorter and sweeter. There were no appeal rights. Article 26 provided: “The judgment of the Tribunal as to the guilt or the innocence of any Defendant shall give the reasons on which it is based, and shall be final and not subject to review.”

In short, the procedural protections afforded the Guantanamo detainees under the statute before the Supreme Court in Boumediene substantially exceed those accorded the Nuremberg defendants. Obama’s unfavorable comparison of the legal treatment of the Guantanamo detainees with that of the Nuremberg defendants suggests either that he does not know what he’s talking about, or that he feels free to take great liberties with the truth.

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Obama praised the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 12 decision that Guantanamo prisoners, detained for years without charge or trial, should be able to ask federal courts to rule on their continued detention.He thinks that courts are the way to keep America safe! He ignores that we are in a war against terrorism, Obama was more concerned about the rights of terrorists … than the rights that the American people have to safety and security.

Obama’s point boiled down to common nonsense in making “Change”: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Our federal courts have been in business for more than 200 years. They’ve tried brutal Mafia bosses who controlled entire American cities, violent drug lords, Nazis, spies and the Oklahoma City bombers. U.S. courts have procedures for handling sensitive national security evidence, and they have already successfully tried Al Qaeda terrorists, including “shoe-bomber” Richard Reid and 9/11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui. These men had their day in court, made idiots of themselves, and now they’re locked away in a U.S. supermax prison.

TAPPER: Do you think that the fact that this is now going on in California, does that cause you to re-think your pledge to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act?

OBAMA: No. I still think that these are decisions that need to be made at a state and local level. I’m a strong supporter of civil unions. And I think that, you know, we’re involved in a national conversation about this issue.

You know, I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, but I also think that same-sex partners should be able to visit each other in hospitals, they should be able to transfer property, they should be able to get the same federal rights and benefits that are conferred onto married couples.

And so, you know, as president, my job is to make sure that the federal government is not discriminating and that we maintain the federal government’s historic role in not meddling with what states are doing when it comes to marriage law. That’s what I’ll do as president.

Obama being a democrat wants to speak his mind along democratic principles. He finds it more meaningful to be righteous than to be safe. Should a suicide bomber explodes himself before him, will he still talk about people’s rights with same intensity as he does now?

Barack is clearly the “feelgood” candidate.
He said he would have avoided the Iraq war by developing alternative energy sources; this is so vague as to be laughable. What is his plan?
A portable nuclear reactor in every car?
.

If America “dumbs down” sufficiently it will probably elect someone like Kobe Bryant as president.In which case, God help America. The question is over for me. This is the last person on the planet we need in the White House. I suspect that his numbers will crash even farther once more folks find out about all this.

The Republicans, and even his rivals in the Democratic party, are going to crucify him in the heat of the campaign. They will drudge up every little detail.

I sure don’t apologize for the Iraq war. Do the Muslims apologize for the hundreds of millions of “unbelievers” their jihadists murdered over the past several centuries.What I perceive as foreign policy “blunders” by the US government were usually calculated, deliberate machinations and were usually part of a military-espionage campaign to deter Soviet-sponsored military infiltration in the third World nations– a subject that you seem not to know very much about. Even if these seem like blunders to you, they enabled the US to prevail over the Communist movement, at least for the time being.

As for Iraq, the events of 9-11 made it seem probable that America was going to inherit the role of combating the global jihad at various locations across theplanet,somebody is going to have stop the jihadists. And that is not going to change no matter who gets elected. Obama would have us hide in the closet in spite of the reality that the only thing that has ever thwarted jihad is force; history has proven that as in Vienna in 1783 and the Battle of Tours in 732 AD.

Barack Obama’s belief that we should treat terrorists as nothing more than common criminals demonstrates a stunning and alarming misunderstanding of the threat we face from radical Islamic extremism. Obama holds up the prosecution of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 as a model for his administration, when in fact this failed approach of treating terrorism simply as a matter of law enforcement rather than a clear and present danger to the United States contributed to the tragedy of September 11th. This is change that will take us back to the failed policies of the past and every American should find this mindset troubling.

Ever notice how when obama is called on his vague and confused answers they get more vague and confused? then he wonders why everyone is lokking at him like he is crazy because he makes even less sense than usual. hate to sound like i want a “lynching”, but i think some of the gitmo guys should have had accidents in the field or something. they are scarey, scarey people who will stopa tnothing to destroy this country and obama wants to help them.

Obama is an idiot.–Pitching his message to Oregon’s environmentally-conscious voters, Obama called on the United States to “lead by example” on global warming, and develop new technologies at home which could be exported to developing countries.

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK,” Obama said.

So now he will tell us how to set our thermostats and what cars to drive, just to appease other countries? He is clearly the best choice for anyone who wants a complete nanny state, and who cares what “others” think about you.

He really makes me want to put my A/C on 70, and go out and buy the biggest SUV I can.

This is one of those late night jokes. Pero joke nga ba o may bahid ng katotohanan?

“Tonight, we’re going to examine the audacity of fear. You know, there’s an awful lot to be afraid of in the world. Terrorists, tomatoes. … There’s one emerging fear that trumps all others. Baracknophobia. It is defined as the irrational fear of hope. The irrational fear that behind the mild-mannered facade, Barack Obama is intent on enslaving the white race. It’s true. Wake up, white people.” –Jon Stewart